Maybe he should just retire so he can have ample time for siestas?
The Democratic case to subpoena the State Department didn’t make much of an impression on one key Republican senator, James E. Risch of Idaho, who appeared to be asleep for a significant portion of it.
Shortly after 5:30 PM Risch — chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees the State Department — could be seen from the press gallery motionless, with his eyes closed and head slumped against his right hand.
Risch was the first lawmaker seen by Washington Post reporters to clearly have fallen asleep, about four hours after the trial proceedings began Tuesday. When [Representative Val] Demings cued up video of testimony from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, Risch briefly perked up, but quickly closed his eyes again.
The apparent snooze ended about fifteen minutes later, at 5:52 PM, after Demings summarized another video clip.
Granted, it’s been a very long day of proceedings in the Senate.
But that’s the format that Republicans chose. They are currently in the majority. They drew up the schedule for this trial and drafted the rules of procedure to be presented to the Senate for its consideration.
Risch, seventy-six, is a former governor and lieutenant governor of Idaho with an archconservative voting record. He has served in the United States Senate for eleven years, succeeding fellow Republican Larry Craig, who became infamous after being arrested in a Minneapolis airport bathroom stall in 2007.
Risch is a major ally of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and reliably votes in lockstep with Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump on pretty much everything. If you look at the archives of Last Week In Congress, you can see that Risch is aligned with Trump and McConnell nearly one hundred percent of the time.
The Senate, as of the time this post was written, was still in the middle of debating a series of amendments offered by the Democratic caucus to the trial rules of procedure. The fifty-three Senate Republicans have defeated the first four amendments to be offered by the Democrats so far.
6 Comments
I was bored watching the proceedings also.
Too bad — you seem to have already made up your mind. Sad. I thought real journalists were always seeking the truth. I pray the truth is revealed and lies exposed.
You’re correct, Marie… I have already made up my mind. The evidence shows that Trump is guilty. That evidence was made available during Trump’s impeachment inquiry. I am not a United States Senator, so I do not have the responsibility of being a juror in his removal trial. And I am not an objective journalist — I’m an advocacy journalist — so I do not worry about attempting to be fair or impartial. I’m transparent about where I stand. There’s no mystery about what my values and principles are or my views on the issues.
Risch can’t stay awake during a long day at his desk. Imagine if he had to perform a difficult, demanding job that required manual labor…
I can’t blame him. How many of us have been held hostage in an endless meeting? They always have the room warm and have comfy seats.
Trump is not guilty of what the Democrats have accused him of. If you look at the transcript of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky, which I’m not sure you’ve done, there is nothing that Trump did wrong.
The Democrats accuse Trump of having threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky agreed to start an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden and their dealings with Burisma. This will be found nowhere in the transcript. Trump never made Ukraine receiving aid contingent upon an investigation of the Bidens, as Ukraine’s aid was withheld only momentarily, but not for the reason the Democrats claim. The government of Ukraine is notoriously corrupt, so it only made sense that Trump would want to see if the new president would responsibly handle the aid received from the U.S. before said aid was sent.
Also, as far as I know, Ukraine’s government never initiated an investigation of the Bidens, but still received the promised aid, which debunks the aforementioned contingency claim.
If Trump actually had done something wrong, I would say so. Simply because I’m a Republican doesn’t mean I won’t call out Republicans who do things that are wrong. However, this is certainly not one of those times.
Yes, I’ve read the transcript. I’ve also reviewed the other evidence, which clearly shows that Donald Trump tried to use the power of the presidency to coerce an American ally into doing him a political favor. What Trump did is the textbook description of corruption. It’s unfortunate you can’t see this. The president’s own legal counsel doesn’t even dispute the case against him. Their defense is basically a game of smoke and mirrors.
If Trump did nothing wrong, why not turn over documents? Why not produce witnesses? What is all the stonewalling for?
I’ve lost track of the number of times I have heard Republicans say: “Innocent people having nothing to fear from cooperation with an investigation.”
It’s another case of do what we say, not what we do.